By Eric Vinje, Planet Natural

There’s something deeply satisfying about turning garbage into vegetables — or at least into compost, vegetables’ best friend. To get started all you need to do is collect a bunch of brown materials (leaves, sawdust, vegetable stalks), mix them together in a pile with plenty of green materials (grass clippings, vegetable scraps, garden waste), keep everything nice and moist (not wet), and voila! Compost.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it is. It just doesn’t happen very quickly. Fortunately, compost bins can help, reducing decomposition time from several years to a single season or less.

Available in a large variety of shapes and sizes, composters are designed to help you produce compost more efficiently. They look great (okay, maybe not great, but a whole lot better than a heap of garbage in your back yard) and they speed up the decomposition process. Faster decomposition means more compost for your garden, which is good not only for your plants but also for the environment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that composting can reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills by as much as 24%. (more…)

Yesterday after the big feast, your friendly and conservation-minded Planet Natural Blogger noticed something he notices every year at Thanksgiving: how much food is being discarded. The abundance made me think of all the foodstuff that becomes waste and how much methane it generates once in the landfill. And just like that, I had something to put at the top of my Christmas list: a Bokashi bucket!

Bokashi is a self-contained, anaerobic method of composting that accepts things that, for reasons of pests, varmints and sanitation, shouldn’t go into your regular compost heap. Bokashi is actually the bran or other grain meal that is innoculated with beneficial, highly active microbes that will turn food scraps into a useable compost tea. This tea is so potent you wouldn’t want to use it directly on plants right away. Instead it’s allowed to mellow over a period of a couple weeks, then diluted; or buried in your garden soil in increments that temper its life-boosting power. (more…)

Like it or not, here comes autumn and its bounty of leaves, garden refuse, and other compostable materials. If you’re just getting into composting — or your bin or tumbler won’t hold all of fall’s organic bounty — it’s time to think big. Large composting piles or bins — and a little patience — will reward you down the road with more compost. And that means more benefits for your lawn and garden.

Big compost bins need to do more than just hold large quantities of compostable materials. They need to breathe, provide easy access for turning, and be located close to where you’ll be using your compost. And it must be remembered that large amounts of materials will take a longer period of time. We like to think in terms of threes, since, in our experience, these really large heaps take three years, more or less, to turn to rich soil amendment. The three-bin compost bin, often left open in the front seems perfect. Fresh materials are put in the first bin and are turned into the second after several months. The half-way materials in the second bin are then turned into the third bin where they can be harvested as needed. (more…)

In a previous post, we recommended adding paper or cardboard to a compost heap that’s too moist. Paper will absorb water as well as provide short-term air space to aide in circulation if it’s crumpled. That suggestion, as pointed out by one of our more careful readers, brought up an entirely different subject: is composting paper safe? The answer is yes. And no.

Paper — made from wood pulp — seems a likely addition to compost because of its source: nature. Newspapers have long been held as a good source of “brown” component in the brown-green, carbon-nitrogen balance that compost piles need (so much so that adding too much paper will tip the balance). But paper might also contain some harmful ingredients in the form of inks, dyes and other treatments. These days, most newspaper inks are soy-based, a good thing for the environment (though the soy used in inks is likely from GMO sources). But some inks may still contain petro-chemicals or pigments if they include color as most papers do. Also newsprint may hold some chlorine from the bleaching process. Newspaper is bleached less than most commercial office papers but may still contain some chlorine. (more…)

The record drought locked on many (and we mean many) parts of the country calls for home gardeners as well as commercial interests to rethink their watering strategies. Equally important to organic gardeners is the moisture content of their composting pile. Moisture in compost is critical and having too much or too little can slow or sour the process. Having too little will slow or stop the composting process. Having too much moisture in the pile will fill the necessary air spaces and turn the process into an anaerobic digester something most garden composters want to avoid (though it is an accepted composting technique with its own set of requirements).

How do you know if your compost pile needs watering? Most expert composters suggest a moisture content of 40% to 60%. A quick, hands-on visual check should tell you if the pile is too dry: it will lack heat and there’ll be little evidence of organic material break down. If you compost is too wet, it’s probably slimy and smells bad. A good rule-of-thumb is the sponge test: your compost should have the consistency and moisture content of a wrung-out sponge when you squeeze it. (more…)